Renovations
With six children, President Theodore Roosevelt was cramped when he moved into the White House on September 27, 1901 following the death of President William McKinley. Office and living space were mostly confined to the second floor of the White House. For safety reasons, the floors of the State Dining Room and East Room were reinforced with wooden planks whenever a large number of guests were expected for an event. The new president soon realized the White House needed to be expanded and restored, so he supervised a large-scale renovation that lasted through 1902 and brought the iconic building into the 20th Century.
President Roosevelt ordered the construction of a temporary office building to the west of the White House. Today, the building is known as the West Wing. The renovation not only relocated staff offices, but it also renovated the living space of the White House, expanded the State Dining Room, repaired the rooms on the State Floor, remodeled the basement and transferred the visitor's entrance from the north to the east.
On Christmas Eve, 1929, a fire broke out in the West Wing. When the charred interior was rebuilt, a new feature was added: air-conditioning. Four years later, another president named Roosevelt made changes to his fifth cousin's "temporary office building" -- Franklin Roosevelt expanded the West Wing and relocated the Oval Office to the southeast corner in 1934. He also built a swimming pool, which was converted into a Press Briefing Room during the Nixon Administration.